Sad She's Gone
by Alyss Penedo
Summary: Natsume meets another youkai who knew Reiko. This one, however, is different. It's been searching for someone, and insists Natsume is its quarry...
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** New story! Set somewhere in the later volumes, because Nyanko isn't wholeheartedly jumping at every chance to have a decently powerful youkai eat Natsume.

Long note at the bottom. Happy reading!

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><p>"Oi, Nyanko-sensei! Where are you?"<p>

Natsume paused to sigh. The forest was quickly filling with shadows, and he really didn't want to get lost out in unfamiliar wilderness at night. He needed to find his wayward bodyguard and head back to the dorms where the class was staying for the durations of the trip. "Oiiiiii! Nyanko-sensei!"

The bushes to his left rustled, and Natsume jumped. Turning to the disturbance cautiously, he ventured, "Nyanko-sensei…?"

A short figure appeared, cloaked and vaguely humanoid and distinctly _not _a pudgy cat. Its pitch black eyes latched on to Natsume. "A child of man…? Natsume Reiko?" It croaked.

It didn't seem hostile, but Natsume still edged back slowly as it emerged, its head tilted curiously. "No, I'm not Reiko-san. She's alread-"

"Not Reiko! Not Reiko!" It let out a hysterical little giggle, a maniac grin spreading its lipless mouth. "Of course not!" It leaned in, leering as Natsume backed away as quickly as he dared. "Did you know Reiko's gone? She's gone! She gone!" The youkai twisted through the trees in a mad little dance, sable cloak billowing around its bony frame, as it chanted, "She's gone! She's gone!"

"Er..."

Natsume hesitated, debating between staying and simply leaving while it was distracted, before he ventured, "Excuse me..." The youkai froze and tilted its head just enough to stare at Natsume with that unnerving gaze again. "Did you know Reiko-san? Is your name in the Book of Friends, by any chance?"

"Book of Friends... Would a child of man's name in the Book of Friends, child of man?"

"Natsume!" A fat, tri-colored cat came bumbling through the underbrush, obviously more than a little drunk and with sake bottle strapped to its back. "I take my eyes off you for five minutes, and you run off on your own- hmm? What's this?"

"You were the one who went off on your own, sensei. And I'm not sure, but this youkai seems to have known Reiko-san." He turned back to the spirit, who simply stood there, stock-still, evidently still waiting for a reply. Natsume decided to humor the strange youkai. "No, there are no human names in the Book of Friends. Why?"

"What's this about the Book of Frie-?" Nyanko-sensei was abruptly cut off as the youkai, seeming to have just noticed the creature by Natsume's feet, leaned over and shoved its face so close that it's nose almost poked the lucky-cat in the eye.

"And you? Is _your_ name in the Book of Friends, tanuki?"

_"What?_" Nyanko jumped back, equal parts indignation and a need for personal space. "I am _not _a tanuki! And don't compare me to those lower-level beings that Reiko picked fights with; I'd never do something so stupid as have my name taken! How dare you!?" Madara slammed his paw onto the ground several times to emphasize his point, fuming. The rest of his rant was cut off as the youkai leapt up, eyes sparkling with something akin to hope, and promptly skipped a sort of strange, ecstatic circle around the two.

"_Two!_ Two who know Reiko! _And_ not in the Book!" It rasped a breathless laugh as it came to a stop exactly where it had started. It pivoted to face them both, impossibly wide smile splitting it's face. "Are you sad she's gone? Are you?"

"Eh?"

"Why do you ask?" Nyanko huffed, shifting. He hadn't noticed, drunk as he was, until it started moving around and spreading its scent, but this unassuming youkai was _powerful_. Possibly on par with the great Madara himself.

It stopped smiling for a moment. Tone wiped of all inflection, it replied, "Because I'm the one that sent her to the afterlife."

"So, so! Are you sad? Are you?"

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><p><strong>AN:** Why, hello there.

Introductions! I'm Alyss, nice to meet you, and surly-and-sarcastic down there is Alex, my personal live-in grouch. He shoots down my lovely plunnies and makes me _work. _Ugh_._  
>[Hello. I'm Alex, and contrary to whatever goes on in Alyss' sorry excuse for a mind, I <em>am<em> capable of being polite. Up there is Alyss, my perpetually illogical and petty acquaintance. She is incapable of managing her own plot bunnies, so I put them out of their misery when they get out of hand. Pleasure to make your acquaintance.]

So! Anyone who checks out my profile knows that I've been on something of a Yuujin-chou binge recently. You've just started reading the result of that binge XP And if you're reading this, you may (or may not; who knows?) know of my other Yuujin-chou story, A Twist in the Times Before. It's been on hiatus for the longest time, and now I plan to rewrite it. It's kind of awful. But that rewriting process will only really start after I'm done with this fic, so no worries! (Hakuna matata! XP Raise your hand if you get it~)

This fic is sort of Reiko-centric, even if she doesn't come into play until much, much later. It's going to be mostly Natsume and Nyanko, though. Maybe a few cameos from other Yuujin-chou characters; I'm not sure.

[Alyss. Name.]

Ah. Right, I need help picking an appropriate name for the youkai. I have one in mind, but it's a bit clichéd and I don't really like it. There's a bit of a cap on how far I can go without a name and a basis/background to go with, so any help with that would be muchly appreciated. It might have to wait a bit till you know more about the youkai, though.

Right, ramble over. This story will not be that long; ten chappies, maybe, and longer ones than this one. (I only ended this one there because I'm fond of trolling people XP) Expect the next one in a few days. Laters~


	2. Chapter 2

Natsume felt the blood drain from his face. He had no idea what his expression must have looked like, and found that he couldn't quite bring himself to care. "_What?_" he said. Some part of his mind absently noted than this voice had gone hoarse and choked, the word coughed instead of spoken. "_You_...?"

It had been staring at Nyanko-sensei, but at his outburst, turned to him, white features blank and black eyes scrutinizing. He wasn't sure what it was looking for, but narrowed his eyes and scowled for all he was worth. Something tight and painful had lodged itself in his chest, and he was having trouble working coherent thoughts around it.

It _smiled_. Natsume idly wondered when his fists had clenched.

"You are! You are!" It looked like it was about to hug him, but settled for beaming at him from a safe distance with that unsettlingly wide, toothless smile. "I finally found you! Just like Reiko said!"

Natsume felt his anger splutter to a confused stop. "Oh? And what do you want with him? I'm warning you, he's _my_ prey." Nyanko-sensei was being unusually serious about this.

The lucky cat's words went unheeded. "I found you, I found you." It nodded to itself and gestured to Natsume in a 'come hither' motion. "So, so, let's go!" It cheerfully ambled off through a path in the bushes -a path that was _not_ there a second ago.

"It... Expects us to follow it?" Natsume asked Nyanko-sensei as it rapidly flitted out of earshot.

"Does it think we're stupid or something? Jeez, what a pain. Let's go, Natsume." Nyanko nudged Natsume towards where he assumed the path back to the dorms were, before waddling off. "That one's bad news." Natsume cast a long glance at the path the youkai went down, left open invitingly and promising answers and secrets, before he shook the temptation off. (Nyanko-sensei's quickly retreating back helped a great deal.) He made his way through the trees, trusting his bodyguard to know the way.

That youkai was dangerous, and obviously not right in the head. It was better to walk away. The promise of answers was almost impossibly tempting, but this youkai wasn't like the others; it claimed to have _eaten _Reiko-san, and even if it didn't seem hostile, he didn't want to get involved in something so dangerous. (Whatever Sensei might accuse, he actually _wasn't_ suicidal.)

Still, as he stumbled onto the beaten dirt path, he had the nagging suspicion that he had yet to see the last of it.

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><p>Over the next few days, the suspicion faded and became slowly buried under schoolwork, hanging out with Nishimura and Kitamoto, and the exhaustion of returning names in secret.<p>

In the middle of the night.

Apparently, word had spread to the youkai in the area that _that _Natsume was nearby and returning names, as they came flocking to his dorm room once the sun had set. He'd had to resort to moving to the bathroom after everyone else fell asleep to hide the light of the ritual from the rest of the students, and it was _exhausting_. (He'd fallen asleep in there once, and was subject to the endless ribbing and concerned teasing of his friends the next day.)

In short, he'd been too horrendously busy to give the strange youkai much thought until, on the train ride home, he blinked and found it quite suddenly sitting in the empty seat next to him.

"Gah!"

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><p><strong>AN: **Okay, I lied. It's not longer than the first chapter. But! It came out much faster than promised, so... That's all good, yes?

...It might turn out to be longer than ten chapters if I keep spamming you with chappie-drabbles like this. But the cliffhangers amuse me far, far too much XP

I'm trying to make my A/N's shorter, since apparently people are more likely to read them if I ramble less. But I _like_ my ramble-ness. So it's a work in progress... TT_TT


	3. Chapter 3

**NOW ALEX-APPROVED.**

**A/N:** Uhhhh... yeah, I have excuses. Kind of doubt you'd want to hear them, though. Suffice to say, my brain met real life while its plunny buffer had been dispersed to other fandoms. Guess which won. But this chapter is (sorta) longer to make up for it! ...Longer for me, at least, since I suck at writing long chappies, especially for this fic.

I feel like I've lost touch with how unhinged I wanted the youkai, though. So we'll just pretend that it's calming down after interacting with a human again after so long ;P

On with the show!

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><p>"Eh? Natsume? What's wrong?" Nishimura stuck his head across the aisle. Nyanko, from his spot by the window, narrowed his eyes at the spirit.<p>

"Ah..." Natsume cut a sharp glance at the youkai -which had, oddly enough, pressed a clawed fingertip to its lips in a parody of a shushing sign and was curled up into an inconspicuous ball on the seat, bone-white arms wrapped around black-cloaked knees. "No, it's nothing. Just a bug." He gave his patented reassuring smile, waiting out the harmless ribbing he got from the other boy, until Nishimura went back to chatting with Kitamoto.

He turned the full force of his glare on the youkai. "What are you doing here?" He hissed.

It shook it's head, clamping down into a tighter bundle and giving him a reproachful look. "No talking! No talking! Humans near," it stage-whispered, as if this were something Natsume should have known already. Then, in a girl's voice -a _familiar_ girl's voice, though he couldn't quite place it-, it quoted "When humans see other humans talking to something they can't see, they think it's weird." Natsume blinked, nonplussed at both the voice-shift and the fact that a youkai seemed to have taken such a consideration to heart.

"You..." Nyanko hopped onto Natsume's lap, eyeing the other spirit speculatively. "Exactly how well did you know Reiko?"

"No talking." It clammed up and ignored any attempts of both boy and (-sort of-) cat to draw it into conversation, choosing to spend the rest of the ride in still, sullen silence. When they realized they weren't going to get anything more out of it, they both let it be and continued their respective activities at their own leisure, though they often shot it suspicious glances that gradually contained marginally less animosity as the ride wore on.

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><p>Natsume stopped, deciding that the path was empty enough for his purposes. "How long are you going to keep following me?" He shot over his shoulder, perhaps a little less hostilely than if the spirit had intentionally caused him trouble.<p>

Said spirit had been silently trailing him with all the unobtrusiveness its four-foot self could manage ever since he'd stepped off the train, and though it had not shown any malicious intent and even tried to avoid distracting Natsume, he was loathe to lead it home to the Fujiwaras. It looked around suspiciously before evidently coming to the same conclusion Natsume had -the path was empty enough for this conversation. It said, bluntly, "Until you come with."

Natsume turned to face it fully. "With you? Why? Where do you want to go?"

It hesitated. "She said if I tell the sad one, they might not want to come..." It turned away from Natsume and started muttering to itself, seeming to ignore the fact that Natsume was very much in earshot. "But she also said if I told them I was the one who killed her, they might get mad and try to chase me there, and this one didn't do that... Was I wrong? No," it turned to Natsume with a determined glint in it's pits-for-eyes. "Come visit Reiko-body with me."

"W-what?"

"Reiko-body." It nodded empathetically. "Where the other humans stored it, after Reiko-spirit left."

"I don't-"

"He means her grave." Nyanko cut in, growing impatient. Natsume paused. That... hadn't been at all what he was expecting.

"You know where it is? ...Why do you want _me _to go with you?" He asked, a tad suspiciously. Not that he was particularly against it, now that he'd thought of it...

"Reiko wanted me to take the sad one to see Reiko-body." It frowned at him. "But now you _do_ want to come. Reiko said you wouldn't. ...I don't think you're the sad one. Wrong again, wrong again." It abruptly turned to leave.

"Eh?! H-hey!" Natsume reached out and grabbed its shoulder.

It shot him a puzzled look, before it turned to face him. "Ah! I was impolite. Sorry, sorry." It bowed and said, "sorry for bothering you. Thank you for your-"

"No, that's fine." Natsume hurried to correct it. "Just, will you tell me more about Reiko? And who she asked you to look for?"

It blinked. "Hmm..." It hemmed and hawed for a bit, before it nodded. "Should be okay. But you don't have to go? Reiko always has to leave when the sun starts going down."

"Ah, shoot, that's right. It's getting late." Natsume paused, curiosity warring with protectiveness, before he sighed. "Why don't you come with me? You can tell me the story after dinner."

"That's okay? Reiko gets mad when I follow her home."

Natsume blinked as he noted something a bit off. _...Is it talking about her like she's not dead?_ Outwardly, he just replied, "yeah, it's fine. Just... don't bother the humans I live with, got it?"

It nodded furiously, looking immensely pleased, and fluttered along after Natsume with the sort of barely-contained eagerness he'd expect of a grade-schooler on a field trip. Natsume found himself suppressing a reluctantly amused grin.

"Jeez, there you go again, doing whatever you please. Someday you're going to get yourself eaten by being so friendly." Nyanko yawned and climbed his way up to perch on Natsume's shoulder.

"Isn't that what you're here for, bodyguard-san?" He retorted flatly, staggearing for a second until he adjusted to the weight.

"Well, something like that is good for me, since it means I'll get the Book of Friends sooner."

"...Nyanko-sensei, you're getting heavy. You should go on a diet."

"What?! I'll have you know that it's fur, you brat! It's just my winter coat growing in!"

"It's not even mid-fall yet, sensei."

"Silence!" The lucky cat pounded it's paw on the boys shoulder in aggravation, and the two dissolved into a only partially-verbal spar.

From where it stood, waiting for them to catch up, the youkai's grin softened into something a little less maniac, a little more fond.

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><p><strong>AN:** [You forgot something.]

If you tell me I forgot my sanity or some other troll, I will be Not Amused, Alex. What'd I forget?

[Don't compare me to you T_T And _this time_, you've forgotten the disclaimer.]

...Oh right. Ehehe... But! It's not really necessary, since I'm not making any money off this anyways, right? Nothing to sue here, people. Move along.


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